Damn, I wish I had space to lay out all my collection like this. As it is I'm going to have to squeeze Monstructor onto the same shelf.

#firstworldproblems

 

Black Widow movie = Not for me because it's a prequel and if I'm being honest I don't see what the fuss over the character is.

Female characters with actual powers such as Captain Marvel, Scarlet Witch, Squirrel Girl, Ms Marvel, She Hulk, Invisible Woman, Medusa, Crystal and the various ladies from the X-Men intrest me, generic black ops agents, not so much.

@Underlord,
Only things I'm not overly fond of with Iron Factory Mirage are the shape of the front and rear spoilers but that's being nitpicky, still a great figure.

 

..what he said.....
I too had mainly Go-Bots as a kids, so mine (probably due to his similarity to American Football that I was also watching at the time),
was Dive-Dive.

"What's the difference between this pub and a submarine"?
"Nothing...dive, dive, dive".

Laters.

 

I am proper excited. The next music is completed, it sounds fucking awesome... only I need to stick my producer hat on because the various sections aren't properly stitched together. Transitions are the latest headache. There's a screaming opening, screaming ending, and a shouty middle bit, but I don't have a way to go from one to the other yet.

Oh Gobots. Some fantastic designs, a hell of a lot more originality... the absolute worst in names.

 

Fantasic. I had a Dinoking a long time ago but I sold it. Which I regret but it was necessary at the time. I’ve got a Slog (the only one who’s from my childhood and is still my favourite and intact dispute gps) Birdbrain and Icepick but the latter two have sweaty shells. I used to keep them in the fridge as War environments seemed to make them worse. It was a weird display to say the least.

 

I think I'm actually looking forward to Black Widow more than the others because she's just a highly trained agent (although I think there's some Super Soldier Serum Shenanigans going on throughout most of the heroes as they all age very well). It's just a shame Red Sparrow kind of beat them to the punch.

It's going to be interesting to see the Soviet Avengers. Is Crimson Dynamo confirmed? Seems like that would make Stark's big super tech evolutionionary kickstarter in Iron Man 1 obsolete.

It's funny how Batman Begins talks about escalation. That whole Jim Gordon speech should have been cut and pasted and given to Nick Fury as it applies so much more for the MCU.

 

This is a reply to @Underlord from my Facebook page. But I was gonna post something along these lines anyway in here.

Being a Stunticon fan, I bought the first release of Crackup and liked him a lot but was already waaaay out of love with the cartoon hard on going down.

So it turned out to be a one off purchase and as everyone else started throwing their keys into the fuckfest, I was out of those efforts too.

Then these things happened.



These redesigns are a synthesis of animation model and heavy toy influences. It just works. For me, the emphasis on the toy part makes the aesthetic arguably better than when Takara started releasing the Masterpiece cars (back when they were hybrid influences).

Leaning towards the toys works. It's niche, but dammit it works.

 

Fair enough if you're looking forward to it for that reason, I'm just at a point where I'm being very picky about what I watch as I got very burned out on the whole MCU formula and beyond GOTG3 I'm not really sure what else I'll bother with in terms of movies, definitely going to be watching Loki and WandaVision on the Disney channel though!

Not sure about Crimson Dynamo for the movie, he's not in the Marvel Legends wave that's been showing up in store computers. That consists of,

Black Widow
Yelena Bulova
Taskmaster
Red Guardian
Crossbones (comic)
Winter Soldier (comic)
Spymaster (comic)

No BAF has been announced yet so I guess if Dynamo made it he'd be a decent bet for that slot.

EDIT,
Juggernauts by Brendan Mitchell, on Flickr

 

So I had a bit of a moment today. Putting MP45 up on the shelf, stood back to look and noticed an old collection pic come up on my Home Hub which made realised how far we've come over the last 10 years.....



I know it's not everyone's cuppa tea but this is exactly what I was striving for all those years ago and now they're there. Crazy thing is I'm only a few Headmasters and a titan Defensor short of actually finishing what I set out to do.

If you'd have told me that 10 years ago I'd have called you a crazy bastard. Throw in what the mainline are doing and the fact we're very possibly getting a MP combiner at some point in the near future, on top of HasLab Unicron and Fanstoys Fort Max we're incredibly lucky as a fandom.

Edit - the white looks spot on to me  

Yup the toy versions are fantastic. I love those original toys so they're hitting that nostalgic button hard:



Menasor is gonna be insane.

 

Is it really that Niche though ? Or is it just a consequence of anyone seeing the cartoon BEFORE they see the toys that pushes people into thinking the Cartoon is the primary source and not the toys.?

Speaking for myself I like the alt modes to look like what they are supposed to be be and what the robot modes look like is somewhat secondary. Anything that compromises the vehicle in favour of the cartoon is a tick against it for me.

Though sometimes the cartoon designs have an elemement that just doesn't work as well when translated to a toy - especially to a premium one ; an example of that is the use of white instead of silver.

---------

I was wondering if anyone knows a place to get some cheap spray paint ?
I found some fairly Basic colours in QD fr £1 each but i'm looking for a dark Teal, a Dark Purple, and a sort of Magenta of Fuschia so I was wondering if anyone has noticed a discount chain selling spray paint cheap in some other colours.
I find car spray cheap sometimes but it's often in metallic colours so isn't quite what I need. The colours I need are to paint the fists on the Overscale KO Terrorcons to match the smaller ones.

 

pray for me guys - it's the perfect storm of a fuckton of parcels all arriving on the same day, and no conceivable way of sneaking them all past the missus..

still, Siege Jetfire is waiting for me at home, and should be joined by Ratchet too..

 

Clearly they are presents for her, so she couldn't possibly be angry with you right? (Until cristmas day when she gets just socks and a book token...)

 

lol
TBF, she's normally fine with the odd parcel, but there's at least 2 large boxes and possibly 2 smaller ones as well - it's going to be 'interesting'...

 

Bit of early December collection trimming...

Sales

POTP Deluxe Blastoff--MIB, with little Megatronus Prime Master. 30 GBP plus shipping

TFTM Havoc [Motor Master]---MIB, fantastic condition. No instructions. Last of my TFTM Stunticons. 100 GBP plus shipping

Take them away fellas  

 

(Blueberry mango s)Whirl


People like to complain about Whirl's toys. Too short, too tall, too skinny, too bulky, too much like Alex Milne, not Milney enough, you get the idea. But here's the thing: who was even into Whirl before 2012? Absolutely no-one, that's who. And yeah yeah yeah, you're sat there grumbling "Well I knew him before he was in More than Meets the Eye." Yeah, you knew of him. But did you have any of his early albums? Did you see him at Glastonbury in 2011? Well?

It's possible we're talking about different people.

Whirl then. Don't underestimate his influence on modern Transformers storytelling, at least as far as IDW is concerned. See the problem is, with his G1 toy originating from a non-Takara toy company, he gets the sinister expressionless cyclops face like Shockwave. But with Shockwave it works - he's emotionless and logical, so a face that can't emote suits him just fine. Whirl's not like that, in fact his original bio was pretty clear on him being the exact opposite, an insane and ruthless bastard that just happens to be on the side of the good guys.

So James Roberts had something to address. If the cyclops-face isn't tied to a lack of emotion, where does it come from? Enter Empurata, the process of removing the head and hands of its victim as a legally sanctioned punishment. Brr. But with this, the obvious clash of visual styles of Whirl and Shockwave with the rest of the bunch was rectified. Hurrah.

I liked Whirl, which hardly makes me unique. Spend any time on Tumblr and you'll find he has a large fanbase quietly ignoring the fact that they're stanning (I think that's the word) an out-and-out murderer who's at least partly responsible for the entire civil war starting. Whirl may have a tragic past, but he's not the sweet misguided innocent that some people want to believe he is. He's a bad person who's done terrible things, and by the end of the series Whirl is in and out of jail. His redemption is not in his actions, but in his connection to others, especially his relationship with Cyclonus and Tailgate. I didn't massively aww for Drift and Ratchet, but I did for Whirl.

Anyway, why this Whirl? It's not exactly the most popular of toys, being a redeco of Fall of Cybertron Vortex, and the FOC Combaticons have a contentious reputation as toys. But, ah, well, here y'see. a) The Vortex mould is one of the better of that lot and b) this way Whirl doesn't tower over Universe Cyclonus. Plus he gets this snazzy splash of mango-flavour orange paint all over him which really does brighten him up. There are problems, such as the weedy arms, the rotor blades that have nowhere to go and the great big combiner hand on show tucked into his leg, but it's worth the tradeoff for a raggedy orange kilt and tits that actually scowl. Who even needs a face on your head, eh Whirl?

He doesn't make for a particularly great helicopter, especially thanks to an inability to sit on a flat surface. Yes, I get that on Cybertron he doesn't have much use for sitting around idle in alt mode, but when there's no flight stand hole to support him either he just ends up daftly flopping around the moment you set him down. Also, getting everything to clip together right can be a bit of a faff.

Oh well, he's not for everyone, this Whirl, but he's definitely for me. He gets Vortex's bonkers swords as well as a huge spinny Gatling gun that has nowhere to go in helicopter mode, which is certainly a very Whirl move to pull, bringing more weapons to a fight than he could possibly ever use. Just don't leave him to his own devices, or he'll start shooting Moomins.

 

Hey guys, did anyone else order this? I've been waiting an age since pre-ordering, they mucked around with the release date and it suddenly arrived on Sunday.

Such a must for fans of the old box art.

Also: yellow eyes, grey hands  

 

I approve.

 

Fun fact: Moomins cannot, in fact, die. In fact they only get stronger.

 

Not sure if it has been mentioned but In Demand Toys has both Spinister and Crosshairs in stock as of yesterday.

They’re import like Apeface and Astrotrain.

Hoping I’ve helped someone out

 

 
Evening all!

I haven't seen it, but has Alan Moore had any involvement or has he turned like he always does? Does Alan Moore know the score?

Like a lot of modern toy output of late, I have no connection with Raiden but a train combiner is fairly intriguing and a photo of combiner Trains, Planes and Automobiles would tickle me alright!   [Insert Steve Martin/John Candy meme]

Smell my finger!

No, just nope!

Yes, oh yup!

Chatting with my colleague at work, telling me about a show he saw on a plane to the Dominican Republic recently which he thinks I should check out - The Last Man on Earth - about a fella who appears to be the only survivor of a huge virus which wiped out all humanity, until he discovers others and much hilarity ensues?

A quick Ask Jeeves turns up it was a four season thing, now cancelled, but now available on Amazon Prime - so I'm off to check episode one before I fall asleep on the sofa!